Judith Butler, Lies & Happy Meals

Christine Merser, April 24, 2025

I watched an exchange on the Senate floor the other day. It’s happening more often these days. One of our own, one of the ones who still believes in process and policy and the idea that democracy requires oxygen, stood up and shouted at a Republican across the aisle.

“You know this is a lie! You know what you’re doing!” He was out of control.

He repeated it again. And again. “You know. You know. You know.”

And I sat there in front of the screen, pit in my stomach, fists clenched, feeling the desperation of that repetition. Because I, too, want to believe that they know. That under the spin and the smirks, they know.

But I also want to know, what are they thinking when they scream like that?

So I try to pretend I am one of them. A man in a suit who looks calm while the truth is hurled at him like a firebomb. I imagine him adjusting his cufflinks as he listens, not flinching.

Is he thinking, Of course I know? But I can’t say that out loud. Not now. Not after everything.

Is he thinking, You think I’m going to unravel it all because you got loud on the Senate floor? I’ve got donors to please, a base to rile up, a campaign machine already spinning. I’ve gone too far to turn around.

And somewhere deeper, in the places he doesn’t visit too often, maybe he’s thinking, If I admit this lie, I admit them all. If I admit this one, I lose everything. My seat. My money. My tribe.

I’ve doubled down on a lie that was obviously a lie before. Who among us? Come on. Come clean. But not when it’s this big. This public. It’s unfathomable to me.

He watches the Democrat’s voice break and doesn’t blink. He waits for the time to run out. He looks calm because calm, for him, is armor. And you can’t pierce armor with righteousness. He’s been yelled at before. He can survive yelling. What he couldn’t survive is shame, so he buried it years ago. In some cases, years ago.

I’ve been reading Judith Butler lately. Maybe you know the name, maybe you don’t. In case you don’t, let me fill you in. Butler is a philosopher, a cultural critic, and a force, who changed the conversation decades ago with their book Gender Trouble, where they made the case that gender isn’t some fixed identity, it’s a set of repeated behaviors. It’s performed. Chosen. Reinforced. And it opened up an entirely new way of thinking for me about identity and power.

But over the years, Judith has turned more and more toward political and ethical questions. How we live with each other. How power and language shape what we’re willing to see, and most recently, how authoritarianism actually works at the psychological level. Judith’s latest interviews are less about gender and more about what happens when truth becomes irrelevant.

Butler’s take, at least in my words, is this. People aren’t clinging to the lies because they believe them. They’re clinging to them because the lies free them. It’s not about information. It’s about permission.

These lies give people a green light to say and feel things they were taught to suppress. They get to be cruel, hateful, angry, and instead of shame, they feel pride. The lie isn’t some unfortunate side effect, it’s the key that unlocks years of buried resentment.

And it’s not that they were tricked. It’s that the lies offer them something better than truth. Release. Finally, they get to stop pretending. Finally, they get to say the thing out loud. Finally, they get to stop caring.

It’s not just a political unraveling. It’s an ethical one. And screaming, you know you know you know won’t work, because we’re not talking to the part of them that listens. We’re yelling at something that’s already left the building.

Judith is better at explaining all this but I think you get the gist.

I seriously sometimes think they’re just eating too much McDonald’s and their neurons have stopped firing properly. I’m sort of not kidding. Read about what that shit does to your brain, and you won’t roll your eyes at me behind my back. Sometimes I think they’re just stupid, or uninformed. Sometimes I think they’re desperate. And sometimes, most times, I think they’re just hollowed out. That once upon a time, they maybe had a line they wouldn’t cross, but that line is so far behind them now, they can’t even remember where it was.

Judith Butler didn’t say that part. I did.

But I think she’d agree.

And I think what we’re up against isn’t just misinformation or corruption or bad policy. We’re up against emotional rot. And our mistake has been trying to disinfect it with facts.

There are more of us than them. That’s still true. So why are we losing ground? Because they fight with feeling. And we fight with reason.

Because they gather around grievance. And we scatter around logic.

Because we’re shocked by shamelessness, and they wear it like armor. With a pride that still shocks me.

We keep thinking this is a conversation.

It’s not. It’s a takeover.

But it doesn’t mean we can’t win. It just means we have to regroup. Rethink. Maybe stop trying to win their hearts and start building a firewall around ours.

And no, we don’t need Happy Meals to figure it out.

We need to remember that a pit in your stomach is a sign you’re still human. Still fighting. Still in it, to win it.